Not only did this comic remind me of Sara in the grocery store in the emergency of a bowel movement...but I thought it was awesome nonetheless. Our Zine presentations on Thursday were unreal. There was laughter, and tears (from too much laughter) and it was one of the best assignments I've ever done, in all of my schooling. Including kindergarden. I think the way that each of the groups took the information for the exact same assignment, yet came up with such an array of material is just wonderful. It seems to always be that way with the creative process, and I think our WST 320 has a lot of that process. The way each of us took the assignment and filtered it, coming up with a way to be feminist, political, witty and aesthetically pleasing all at the same time was remarkable. It was a real life performative pedagogy AND politicization of aesthetics/aestheticization of politics AND refunctioning of raw material all at the same time! Imagine... I only wish that once every 3 months we could all get together and make Volume IIs of all of the Zines, and distribute them on campus. I loved the feeling of having the power to make a group of people think by something I've written, or put together. The zine I worked on Paper. was an awesome way of putting Kipnis' refunctioning of raw material into action. The thread we used, the paper bags we stole and the paper we wrote our witty comments on were all used toward a common political voice. I think we all got a little ego-raise that we could actually (without TOO much effort) be published, and eventually envoke change. So props to Taps and Lindsay for coming up with such an amazing "assignment" if you can even call it that, that made us stand up and SAY what we believed instead of just thinking it, and that made us realize how much we can actually do in this world, what we are capable of. And I know Taps has said this all along, but I think we truly are a remarkable group of individuals who can really do something great with ourselves in this world. So as this last blog entry is at my fingertips, I wish you all good luck in everything you do - you are amazing. And I hope that we can all look back on this time in our lives and realize that it was here, now, that we became reactionaries.

One final thought to end it off right: Malorie and Jenna are NOT in any way dating. haha but thanks for the laughs whoever believed it!

Full on Zine-ing

This Friday my excitement of the "long" weekend was quite short-lived as I realized how much work I actually had to complete by Wednesday. However, amidst the craziness I still found time to evaluate our culture industry in true WST 320 form. Special I know.

Lately I've been noticing an abundance of my peer's time being spent on blogs (not to worry, they're nothing like ours, all political and shit) that deal with celebrity gossip and other celebrity happenings (like what they wore last Wednesday for example). I'd just like to state first off that I am appalled. Even with the argument that it is meant for (literally) mindless entertainment, I find it incredibly sad that this type of activity is what our university students are spending their time on. Really. Does it affect you (or anyone really) at all what Lindsay Lohan drank, then puked up later that night? Who cares what a fashion disaster a-list celebrity was, and what a "trendsetter" b-list celebrity is going to be next season. I find as this year goes on I'm getting less and less tolerable and more and more irritated by this kind of behavior. Can you imagine what kind of world we might be able to live in if these intelligent individuals spent their time elsewhere? What if they cared less about Paris' erratic partying and more about our troop's situation in the Middle East? What if they spent less time trying to find the "Perfect Winter Handbag" and more time finding ways to get AIDS drugs to Africa? Maybe I'm being a little too judgemental (as usual) and setting my hopes a little higher than what can be expected. But hey, call me a false-hoped Optimist if you'd like, but I think that real change could be made here. I think we can take from our well-known 5 tenants of liberal feminism and actually USE what was fought so hard for us to get! Where is our reason, of what use is our education (if spent endlessly on justjared.com) and why did women fight so hard for our ontological sameness if we are simply replacing "sewing, cooking, cleaning" with "shopping, gossip and trendiness"? This topic is slowly but surely making me throw up a little in my mouth, so I'm going to finish with those questions and let everyone do what they will with them.

This week's in depth look at Zines and the accompanying culture really made me take a closer look at what I knew. Memorizing and learning the theory is one thing, but to put it into use through popular culture, to me, was quite another. How could we squeeze Baudrillard and Fiske into our Zines, for aren't they already depicting a politicization of aesthetics as Benjamin would say? How would we sneek snipits of theory into our Zine without sounding redundant?
I think I will leave these questions to be answered within my group setting...
However...
Upon learning all of the creative and political things we could do using Zines, I began to feel more empowered. Even though that woman in the documentary assured us that Zines would not change the world, I'm not so sure. What if something radical and thought provoking was planted in someones mind and eventually became action provoking. Maybe an idea (stemming from the well integrated theory) would force someone into refunctioning the raw material around them into something completely wonderful and political all at the same time. Wouldn't Kipnis be proud... I felt that this Zine production not only made me feel a bit of empowerment, but a deposit so to speak in my Pour Soi (as Sartre would describe it). I have been more questioning of myself, what categories I fall into, and hence challenging my very being in order to question it. Probably not all at once though (its been a stressful few weeks). Nevertheless I hope that the production of these Zines helps all of us to question who we are as individuals, and forces us to constantly "become", avoiding reification and growing as the "enlightened individuals" that we are.

I should have been an Outlaw for Halloween

Bunch discusses the idea of the Heterosexual Privilege in society, and how heterosexual women (and men) are validated for being so. I remember Taps discussed an example I'm sure we are all familiar with - the high school party. We all remember her - that gorgeous girl with perfect teeth and amazing clothes walking in with the one thing that pieced her "look" all together - an equally amazing man on her arm. The whole picture to a lot of girls was perfect, and I'm sure a lot of them (myself at times included) wanted to switch places with her. But all that was in place here was assumptive logic. We all assumed that because she had this man that she was "better" in some sense than all of us. How hysterical it is now though when we see what she is up to in comparison with us. Okay, enough caty judging back to the point. I am trying to link Bunch to what Hooks proposed in her article about shared sensibilities. Back at that party, were we not just a bunch of girls? We had that in common, and among other things too! Why then could we not see through that heterosexual privilege and just see a person. Hooks describes walking nihilism, which I think could be linked to the way we saw that "perfect" girl and her arm candy. In a way, we were behaving as walking nihilisms to ourselves, as women, no matter what sexual preference we had. I think that Hooks was on to something when she proposed to make these nihilisms empowering ones. We could take the idea of being what Bunch describes as an "outlaw" and BE that woman alone, embracing her in all of her glory. Would we really need a man there to give us the subjectivity we "need" in order to feel important? Why would it matter if we had a date to an event or not? After all, we (the woman) would be there wouldn't we? Wasn't that enough? I can't help but think that more of us (in and outside of the women's studies group) should take on this empowering thought. After all, Bunch says that "patriarchy is furthered by not deconstructing heterosexuality", and as we've all seen in Feministeppin' we all like to think that we do our part in challenging patriarchy. So why then do we still feel SO alone when we are by ourselves sans l'homme? I hate that in the culture industry there is such a negative spin on "outlaw" and on the "single". I think that we should take Mary Daly's idea of spinning in this sense. For those who spin resist the reification that I think the heterosexual privilege has placed on us. I think we should re appropriate our ideas of that lone woman and take it to be that she is independent, confident and powerful. She is not alone, she has herself (and her girlfriends of course) and she does not need an image of being "with man" to make herself feel important. She's already important, intelligent and beautiful without him. So here's to all of the outlaws out there... just remember " the sisters are doin' it for themselves"!!!!

Steppin' All Over Discourse

Our Steppin' on Thursday took Mary Daly's idea of spinning to the next level. We questioned both language and discourse and took over a public space. We refunctioned "stepps" into somewhat of an antagonistic discourse and morphed raw materials (bras, tampons, bananas, sheet metal and the like) into tools which empowered us and gave us a voice. Speak loud ladies, speak loud. The audience that watched us (as small as it was) I think had no choice but to give us significance because in order to enjoy the performance one had to reflect and listen well to the words being chanted. We may have even converted what Mary would call "Moronic Women" into believers. haha. I think that Foucault's tenant of spatialization (knowing thy place) was also challenged on Thursday, and personally I feel pretty good about that. In that space in time I think all of us were in such a state of mind that we would have performed that short little step of ours on any stage in the world no matter what the size of the audience. I don't know if we would put ourselves in that position if we did not feel as strongly about the material we were to perform, as we did about Feministeppin'. I think we all had a little spring in our step after the show was over. Whether that was confidence, adrenaline or rejecting all that was R-E-PR-E-SS (ive) I can't be sure. All I know is I loved doing this project, and I think we're all a little more "conscious" in our subjectivity. So step on steppers, I think we should all be quite proud of what we accomplished Thursday, if only to dirty Tory floor with soiled tampons and banana peels.